Ex-FAU professor blasts federal judge
She rejected request for new trial, saying ample evidence backed verdict.
James Tracy – a denier of Sandy Hook Elementary massacre — had requested new trial, saying First Amendment rights violated.
WEST PALM BEACH — Fired Florida Atlantic University professor James Tracy blasted a federal judge Wednesday, a day after she rejected his request for a new trial on his claims that the school robbed him of his First Amendment rights by dismissing him for expressing his beliefs that the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre and other national tragedies never happened.
In a stinging rebuke of Tracy’s claims that a jury got it wrong, U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg on Tuesday ruled that ample evidence was presented during a December trial to support the panel’s decision that FAU fired the tenured professor for insubordination, not to punish him for his controversial views.
“The central premise in (Tracy’s) motion for new trial is that the jury’s verdict was against the great weight of the evidence,” Rosenberg wrote in a 31-page ruling. “This contention is without merit. Instead, the court concludes that the great weight of the evidence at trial was in favor of (FAU).”
University officials said they fired Tracy for repeatedly failing to submit a mandatory form, divulging his work on his blog, Memory Hole, the platform the communications professor used to espouse his view that the 2012 shooting of 26 children and teachers at the Newtown, Conn., school was a hoax.
Using that blog, Tracy on Wednesday published a transcript of an interview his attorney did with another professor, who shares Tracy’s belief about Sandy Hook. In the interview, Tracy’s attorney, Louis Leo IV, blamed Rosenberg for what he described as an unfair trial.
“I should start by saying that the reason Dr. Tracy lost in this trial is because of deception and fraud in the court, and it’s something that the court sanctioned,
using the rules of evidence,” Leo said during the inter- view with retired University of Minnesota philosophy professor James Fetzer.
In his blog post, Tracy acknowledged Rosenberg’s rejection of his request for a new trial. He noted that he has already appealed the jury’s decision to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta and asked for dona- tions to his legal defense fund.
In her ruling, Rosenberg firmly rejected Leo’s attempt to rehash decisions she made before the two-week-long trial. “That is improper argu- ment,” she wrote.
Instead, she focused on evidence that, she claimed, justified the jury’s decision. She pointed out that college administrators endured a firestorm of hostility when news surfaced that Tracy was writing an online blog, contending that the Sandy Hook school shooting was staged by the government to spur gun control.
Even as angry phone calls keep his job at FAU — there and emails poured into the was no censorship.” school, she said, adminisShe also rejected Tracy’s trators didn’t order Tracy claims that he had no oblito stop blogging. It wasn’t gation to tell university offiuntil 2015 — three years after cials about his outside activnews of Tracy’s Memory ity. Tracy was president of Hole blog surfaced — that the faculty union that negoschool officials terminated tiated a contract, requiring him for refusing to fill out professors to submit the the form, divulging his outform, she said. side activity. After a yearlong hiatus,
“That the period of time Tracy reactivated his blog in running from (Tracy’s) most March. Two weeks ago, he controversial blog posts was back on FAU’s campus, about Sandy Hook to the delivering a two-hour lecture time of (his) termination was on the Central Intelligence three years — this time period Agency’s influence on maincalls into question the entire stream media. His invitation theory of (Tracy’s) case,” came from political science she wrote. professor Marshall DeRosa,
Further, she noted, FAU who has called transgender took no action against an activist and former athlete instructor who was involved Caitlin Jenner a “freak of in the now infamous “Stomp nature” and described “black On Jesus” exercise in an inter- supremacy” as a major faccultural communications tor in slavery, according to class on FAU’s Davie camreports. pus. While the instructor said Tracy recently told a Palm it was designed to illustrate Beach Post reporter that he the power of words, it was has been unable to find work widely viewed as an attack in academia. “I still enjoy on Christianity. researching and writing, and
“That controversy resulted I would still enjoy teaching in a police presence on camas well,” Tracy said. pus,” Rosenberg wrote. “Yet, that professor was able to